Is it weird....

I wanted to ask this for a while.....is it weird to be an atheist and not be into science? I have never really been into science, so that had nothing to do with my becoming an atheist. For me, I just figured out all of the superstition, and silly stuff credited to god and religion were bull.

I guess I just need to meet more atheists, and remember that we are not all alike. We think different things, like different things and are as individual as any other group out there. It just feels to me, sometimes, like scientific minds reach this more quickly or easily. I could be wrong....

"Who first promised an afterlife to commoners? It had to have been a persuasive marketing ploy for religion."

I beg to differ with you. The Vedas of the Hindu scriptures are about 6500 years old and may be said to be the first to speak of this idea. This idea was then a part of an elborate effort to create a social system. There were no laws, no constitution then and creating a code of ethical living was a problem. If you read only about the Karmayoga and Nishkam Karmayoga in the Bhagvad Geeta, told by Lord krishna to Arjuna, you will realise that it was not a foolish idea but was definitely based on pure imaginative philosophy, as was the custom during those times.

MK, you said nothing about who became wealthy, or powerful, in the social system that resulted from promising commoners an afterlife.

This is a bit delayed answer. I have somehow neglected to reply. The answer to your question, as expectedly, is 'priests', but with a difference. The society was divided in four 'Varnas', i.e. casts and the brahmins were the priests by birthright. However, not all brahmins became rich. Only those that had thorough knowledge of scriptures alone benifited.

Apart from this, there was a restriction on how much wealth a brahmin could posses. Brahmins were not permitted to charge any specific amount at their will but were allowed to acccept what was gifted to them. It was also a religious prescription to brahmins that the must also donate to the needy. Many brahmins led very poor lives.

MK, thanks for your reply. It started me to wondering if brahmins were/are allowed to marry, and if their lives were/are like the lives of the practitioners of other religions.

In the xianities that allow practitioners to marry, their lives are much like the lives of people who own businesses. Some of them earn too little and supplement their income by having other jobs. Many earn enough; a few become wealthy.

In contrast, Roman Catholicism requires its practitioners to take vows of poverty (and chastity and obedience) so groups of them live together in rectories, convents and such.

It seems to me that practitioners who promise commoners an afterlife gain in proportion to the need those commoners have for such promises.

I agree. We are born a tabula rasa which is different from the elective choice to be non-theist. God affirmers, AKA supers for 'supernaturalists', always seem to cast everything in dualistic terms---good-evil, God-Devil, Faith-Doubt, religion-paganism. I think in other terms---natural worldview vs. supernatural worldview. Christians especially struggle with the meaning of an atheist's world view and the source of our moral instruction. (As in no Exodus-Zero Commandments)

Oh how I love a theist who suggests that without a religion as a moral guide, the world would succumb to mass rapings and murder and whatnot.Ask them where they get their morals and without hesitation they will say the ten commandments. Yet bring up any other part of the Old Testament and they will remark how they follow the New Testament. It also begs the question that if Moses lef the Israelites to Mount Sinai where he ascended and received the ten commandments, that means prior to arriving at Mount Sinai, there was no such thing as the ten commandments. And if that is the source of Christian morality, doesn't that mean that without it, the Israelites would have been raping and killing each other on the journey to Mount Sinai? After all, without the ten commandments as a moral guide, they would have succumbed to their vices.

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick what a load of bull. How do otherwise rational adults believe this nonsense?

It isn't weird at all to not be into science. I'm not as into science as most atheists I have met. I appreciate reading the occasional scientific article, but I gave up on becoming a biologist once I realized that chemistry and math don't agree with me! My brain shut down and retreated into arts and languages before I could get to calculus.

For a lot of people, they were just never indoctrinated into a religion and didn't feel the need to find one. Perhaps for them atheism is such a given that they never stop to think about it.

I do think, as many have already said, that an interest in the sciences helps one see the absurdities in the buybull. I mean, the "inspired" writers of both testic...errr....testaments believed the earth was flat.

Eratosthenes, who died ca 195 BCE, accurately figured the circumference of a spherical Earth at least 200 years before any of the New Testament books were written. But I guess YHWH forgot to tell anyone about that.

Sailors knew the earth is curved for hundreds of years BCE, because of the way even very tall coastal mountains would slowly "disappear" as they sailed farther out to sea. The Hebrews were not a seagoing people. Nor do they seem to have been very curious about the sciences or other cultures, probably because their priests only told them what they wanted them to know about Life, the Universe, and Everything.